Yeah, Hip Hop culture has contributed to the problems of the black community. But after reading
The Fourth Turning, I now see that those problems are a sign that we are making a lot of progress. The reason is that the thug culture is typically what you see in a Third Turning. You see the rise of gang violence, rampant drug use, widening wealth gap, irrationalism, culture wars, identity politics, etc. Of course, we've seen a lot of this in the 1980s and 1990s. This is not unprecedented at all. The same trends were apparent in the 1910s and 1920s, the 1850s, and the 1760s. All were overloaded with youth gangs, violence, and crime. Hedonism was unusually popular, as were culture wars arguments, and the political system was gridlocked.
Each third turning was followed by the fourth turning. Crime decreases markedly during the fourth turning. Culture wars arguments come to an end. The fourth turning is by far the darkest and scariest of all turnings. These usually feature major wars, revolutions, social upheaval, major political change, economic catastrophes. But they also feature social renewal, and mark the creation of a new society. The fourth turning changes society's institutions beyond prior recognition. These are the founding moments in America's history. Prior fourth turnings include the Great Depression and World War II, the Civil War (and Reconstruction?), and the American Revolutionary period. All featured major catastrophic war, catastrophic economic collapse, and major political, institutional, infrastructural, and social change. All were overloaded with fear, strife, suffering. But they all had a new sense of community, a new social consensus, a new rise of intellectualism, and a new grass-roots effort to take charge and fix society's problems. We are in the fourth turning now, and it began sometime in the 00s, whether with 9/11, Katrina, or the recent economic crisis. And the rise and election of Obama very much rhymes with the rise of FDR in 1932. And we are fighting two wars. Fear is all pervasive. Crime has dropped dramatically since the early 1990s. People respect intelligent people far more than in previous decades, which is also a sign of a 4T. And in the media, the geek genre of entertainment (fantasy, mythology, comics, video games, science fiction) dominate both television and the movies and even literature (something that hasn't happened since the 1930s and 1940s). This suggests that things will continue to get worse and worse, until society reaches a turning point and things get better. So we have several more years of free fall into hell before things begin to improve. Yeah, we won't have to worry about thugs nearly as much as we did in the 1990s. But we will merely replace that worry of crime with that of being killed in some major political strife. And by the mid 2020s, we will have completed the fourth american revolution.
After that comes a first turning. Think of the 1950s. The ultra conformist, ultra paranoid, and security mindedness directly results from society just having endured 20 years of fear, strife, war, economic depression. In the 1950s, the vast catastrophes of the Great Depression, a catastrophic world war, the holocaust, the invention and usage of nuclear weapons, and the extreme racism and nationalism of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Tojo were still fresh in public memory. The happenings of the fourth turning tend to be a vast trauma that casts a shadow over the first turning. Crime is the lowest during this era. Even the most distressed communities tend to be unified with a strong bedrock. This period is the opposite of the third turning. The culture is very bland and the culture is spirit dead. The political machine is actually powerful, and can get things done that couldn't get done in the gridlock of the third turning. Other first turnings in the past include the 1880s and the 1800s decades, and the next major first turning decade should be the 2030s.
And finally, we have the second turning. This is the opposite of the fourth turning. These are periods of spiritual awakening, religious unrest, and cultural revolutions (such as the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the 1960s). While the fourth turning is focused on the outer world (politics, institutions, infrastructure, governance, technology, economics) the second turning is focused on the inner world (culture, spirituality, religion, values, identity, morale). While fourth turnings found nations, second turnings found religions. Society focuses on reforming the culture, and on infusing spirituality into a society that seems soul dead. This is an era of cultural experimentation into sex, drugs, art, and lifestyle. People search for spiritual truths. All of this results in a sudden rise in crime and drugs, as well as mass hysteria. These also tend to be periods of identity search, and periods of divisiveness. It is no coincidence that black power came along when it did. These tend to be periods of ethnic/racial and religious unrest. Other second turnings include the 1890s and 1900s decades (which saw the rise of Jim Crow, white supremacy/identity, religious unrest, NAACP and the black consciousness movement, Greenwich Village, environmentalism, etc.), the 1820s/1830s (the birth period of both white and black nationalism, romanticism, more religious upheaval, bohemianism, etc), and then the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s. The Protestant Reformation is also a second turning. And by the 2050s we will be in a second turning.
